ALBUM REVIEW: No Wilderness Deep Enough – Steve Von Till
This far into his career, there is little doubt in anyone’s mind the legitimate legacy STEVE VON TILL has. His work with NEUROSIS aside, his time creating with TRIBES OF NEUROT and HARVESTMAN has allowed him forge a unique path with his career, and his four solo records all add to an artistic legacy few come close to matching. With a new record birthed in the wilderness of Germany and appropriately called No Wilderness Deep Enough, STEVE VON TILL looks to take a depressive backdrop of loss and pain and channel it through his music into rich and textured aural tapestries.
There is a warm, welcoming feeling to this record, despite its bleak inspirations. The album pulses with deep bass hits that sound encompassing when listened to on decent speakers. they fill the room, and the simple piano progressions feel like an embrace when they reach their crescendos. STEVE VON TILL is undoubtedly utilising his incredible ear for good sound to execute what is a gorgeous sounding album. The subtle additions of french horn in The Old Straight Track make the song richer and more vibrant as a result, and the natural sounds that open Trail the Silent Hours followed by gentle percussion, it feels beautifully delicate and really reflective of the themes Steve is playing with throughout the record.
The lyrical work across the songs is also suitably contemplative yet optimistic as they look clearly and deeply into the self and the world around us. Von Till does a really good job at delivering the poetry with a gentleness, and his smooth vocals are the perfect matching for the backing music. It all plays off each other to create a wall of sound that, rather than crush like we are sometimes used to as alternative fans, but it overwhelms in the same way water fills cracks. Truly, if you want to experience this album to the fullest you need to sit, and listen to the way this album works flowing from a good set of speakers.
There is a lot to like throughout No Wilderness Deep Enough, but this is not to avoid the flip side to a lot of the positives we already mentioned. Whilst STEVE VON TILL delivers his performance there does feel like there’s a real lack of peaks and troughs, with everything moving along at pallbearer pace. It adds to the contemplative nature of the album, but there is a lot of fantastic potential within the backing tracks, even when they are as simplistic as they are throughout this record. The singular pace and almost one note performance from Steve does make this record a bit of a blur for anyone not investing their time into the songs. With such minimal musical elements, the vocals have the potential to become the focal point and allow the vivid and deep lyrical work to shine through, but there are moments when everything simply fades into the same brush stroke.
Fans of NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS and STEVE VON TILL’s previous work, across his entire back catalogue, will likely find a lot to like here. Thanks to the intricate details dotted across each track thanks to the lonely cello and french horn and the simple progressing piano, Steve paints beautiful canvases with his music. Despite this, there remains a lingering sense of a one note delivery, leaving the often wonderful lyrical work lacking the impact it could have. The true enjoyment for this album comes with how you experience it. If you can, find the time to sit and tune this No Wilderness Too Deep up loud on your sound system and let it envelope you. It will be a definite time well spent.
Rating: 7/10
No Wilderness Deep Enough & Harvestman: 23 Untitled Poems and Collected Lyrics is set for release on August 7th via Neurot Recordings.
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